


man sieht nur mit dem herzen gut

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Series: lou does the kink bingo 2020 [22]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Prosopagnosia, sinara has faceblindness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23379514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: Sinara has never been able to recognise faces. There's ways around that.
Relationships: Kasius/Sinara (Marvel)
Series: lou does the kink bingo 2020 [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591909
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6
Collections: MCU Kink Bingo Round 4





	man sieht nur mit dem herzen gut

**Author's Note:**

> for the square 'prosopagnosia'

“Sinara!”

She stops walking at her name, tries to place the voice before turning around. She thinks she knows who it is but she’s not entirely certain.

“Yes?”she says, glancing at the insignia for confirmation covertly before she adds,“What can I do for you, Your Highness?”

“I’ve told you, Kasius is fine,”he chastises mildly, voice soft and warm. His eyes are warm, too, but the blue isn’t particularly rare. His smile is nice. She knows she won’t recognise it the second she looks away.

“I’m heading to the market,”he says,“I could use some company, if you have the time.”

She’s not his personal guard but he has the authority to tell her what to do anyway, of course. He always asks instead.

“Of course, Your Hi- Kasius,”she says, catching herself just in time.

He’s taken a liking to her for some reason that is, quite honestly, beyond her. Most people grow sick of either her silences or her troubles in recognising them, if they even make it past their distaste of her low birth.

His frequent chattering makes things easier for her. She doesn’t need to speak much. She gets to learn his speech patterns, his tones, the sound of his laughter - all the things she can recognise. She is getting closer and closer to knowing it’s him without having to find other clues.

He offers her his arm and she slides her hand into the crook of his elbow, even if it’s inappropriate. It makes it much easier to study and memorise the pattern of his shirt, just in case she should lose him in the market and need to find him again.

* * *

Sinara sips her drink sullenly, wondering why she agreed to spend her precious free night in this club when she far prefers bars. You get your drinks faster there and aren’t expected to dance.

She knows, of course, why she agreed. Darillion and Azale had asked her, and there is little she isn’t willing to do for her friends.

Darillion had dyed his hair a vivid red, and Azale had cropped short one side of her hair and put a half dozen earrings on the ear on that side when they’d found out she couldn’t pick their faces from a line-up. She’d expected them to just stop bothering with her when she’d confessed, yet they’d kept it up for years now.

Darillion waves to her, gesturing she should join them, and she rolls her eyes but sets aside the glass. Her hair is open, tonight, and she only knows the woman in the mirror behind the bar is her because she’s wearing the same golden bangles high on her arms. Darillion dressed her up for the night.

She’s halfway to her friends when a hand lands on her hip, warm and familiar and urging her around. She turns but whacks the hand away. The man is smiling at her expectantly and mouths,“Hey, wanna dance?”

She can’t hear him over the music. Her heart is pounding and her palms are sweating and she freezes. His clothes are much the same as anyone else’s, the makeup the same black ringed eyes and golden lips that are in fashion, and thus on almost everyone. The eyes might be the right blue. His height seems about right.

But she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t, and so she pushes past him and through the crowd and out of the club, hands clenched into fists to keep them from shaking.

The fresh air hits and it burns her lungs as she gasps like she’s been drowning.

“Wait, Sinara!” Kasius catches up with her - because it is him, when she’d almost hoped it wasn’t - and reaches out before dropping his hand like he might burn himself on her. His voice is uncertain, a little shaky, but still recognisable.“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to -” He falters. He doesn’t know what he did. He repeats,“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,”she mumbles, glancing at those blue eyes, so worried and sincere and warm, and just not a unique enough colour.“You didn’t do anything wrong. I just,”she starts and changes her mind and shakes her head,“I just feel a bit sick.”

She does, with nerves. It’s not a lie, not really.

“I’ll walk you home,”Kasius offers right away.

“You wanted to dance,”she says,“Don’t let me keep you.”

“I wanted to dance with you,”he says and places a hand on her shoulder. He strokes down to her elbow when she doesn’t shrug him off.“Let me walk you, please?”

“Alright,”she says,“I owe you a dance, then.”

She wants to take it back the second the words slip past her lips, such a stupid thing to offer a prince. But he chuckles warmly and kisses her cheek and settles his hand on her lower back as they walk, and she can almost believe he still wants that dance.

“Looking forward to it,”he says, and she wraps herself in the comfort of his warm, familiar voice and pushes all else away.

* * *

She avoids him for the next fortnight as best as she can, switching shifts with other palace guard and volunteering for patrol duty outside the palace.

If he didn’t mean what he said, she’s a fool for thinking he might have and she would rather not embarrass herself any further than she already did when running from him, from her own inadequacies, in that nightclub.

If he did mean it…

She barely dares to think about the possibility. It might mean nothing, just a drunken thing said in the spur of the moment. It might mean there is something to Aza’s teasing that she’s gotten his attention by pinning him down in training a few times to often, and he wants a private repeat. Darillion’s moony notions of what else the prince may want with her don’t even warrant consideration.

Still, if he does want that dance - or anything else besides a guard; and they’ve already sat together without reason too often - then he ought to know what it is he’s wanting. A defective commoner, who does her hair in the same way every day so she will recognise her own reflection.

She finds him in the library, his back turned to her. His shoulders are the right breadth, she thinks. She spent more time than she’d like thinking about wrapping her arms around him and resting her head against those shoulders, or how they would feel if she dug her fingernails into them to drag him closer.

His fingers are tapping a familiar rhythm on the table. It’s the one he taps when he tries to figure out a particularly unconventional move of hers when they play malech.

She clears her throat anyway. Being sure is not enough.

He turns and smiles, patting the chair near his.“Sinara! Come sit. I haven’t seen you in days. How are you, my dear?”

“Fine,”she says. She sits and drops her gaze to her hands. She had words ready but they’re all gone now, just leaving an echo of wanting to say them. Not wanting, really. Needing.

“I’m sorry I overstepped,”Kasius says and puts his hand on hers.“I shouldn't have intruded. You were off duty and it’s not my place to bother you like that.”

Sinara hastily shakes her head. The words still aren’t there but she has to say something and so she blurts,“I didn’t recognise you.”

She tears her eyes away from their hands - and luckily his hand stays on hers - and to his confused, hurt face.

“I can’t remember faces,”she says.“I wouldn’t know my own mother if she walked in right now.”

Her family wouldn’t even know why she brushed past them like they were nothing, if they ever saw her. She hadn’t told because she hadn’t known back then that other people didn’t see the world her way: Mikal’s missing two front teeth, the mole on Grandmother’s nose, Mother’s dented engagement band.

“Oh,”Kasius says, both relaxing and somehow looking more distraught.

“It’s not so bad. I know your voice just fine,”she says. It comes out overly defensively.

Kasius smiles and squeezes her hand.“Careful, my dear, you just gave me permission to ramble on as much as I please.”

“Like you ever hold back,”she teases. Warmth blooms in her chest and she returns his smile.

He lifts her hand and kisses her knuckles.“Not with you, anyway.”

* * *

Kasius requests she join him in his chambers for dinner and against all better judgement, she is excited. They’ve had dinner together before, of course, but he is not usually so explicit with just inviting her. She’s still just a guard; there usually is layers of pretence that she can’t quite see through herself half the time.

He’s sent the servants away before she even arrives. The plates sit under dinner bells, kept warm while they wait for them.

“Hello, darling,”Kasius says the second she steps into the room.

He’s made sure to speak even more than usual these past few days, always greeting her verbally. The ‘darling’ slowly made its way into their interactions.

“What do you think?”he asks and gestures to his face.

It’s painted powder blue and so are his hands. The rest of his make-up remains unchanged.

“You look nice,”she says uncertainly. He does but she couldn't say whether it suits him better than the darker tones currently popular.“Is it a new fashion?”

“No.” He beams at her.“No one else wears it this light.”

He’s very excited by that but she isn’t following. She doesn’t want to ruin it for him, though, so she settles on,“You might start a trend.”

“I should hope not,”he says.“The point is that no one else has it.” He falters.“Does that not work? I thought, maybe -”

He does not get to finish that sentence because Sinara understands and launches herself into his arms to kiss him.

She’d been happy enough to know he did not consider her broken. She’d never expected him to defy fashion for her.

He pulls her close and closer, and she learns all the other sounds she didn’t know yet, as pleasant as the comfort of his familiar voice.

* * *

Exile gives them a lot of downtime; it means Sinara not having to sneak out of Kasius’ bed and back to her own before the first servants are awake.

She wakes up before him anyway. It’s a habit not easily broken.

But she doesn’t mind. It’s nice to just lay there, listening to him breathing and sometimes mumbling and, though he denies it like his life depends on it, snoring at times.

She gets to be close enough for long enough to find all his freckles and pick out her favourites. The cluster just under his left eye gets that title quite quickly. It’s distinct and noticeable enough that she could pick him out even without the light blue he still wears for her.

Most styles of makeup would hide his freckles, though, and he can’t completely forgo wearing it, not even in exile. It would be almost as bad as if he just started wearing the same clothes his servitors wear.

She knows that. It makes it all the more special to see his face devoid of all pretences, truly just him, and still finding something to know she would know him anywhere.

She ghosts her lips over the cluster of freckles before settling back down properly and curling up against him. He doesn’t wake up, but he does pull her closer and mumble her name.

* * *

Sinara walks over to Kasius, who is still in front of the mirror and agonising over the cut on his face. She personally didn’t mind when she got hers. She even made sure they didn’t heal as well as they might have because it was good to know her own face the first thing in the morning, even if she still stuck with her elaborate hairdo.

She wraps her arms around Kasius’ middle and rests her chin on his shoulder.

“You should see the silver lining, darling,”she says and kisses his cheek, careful to just barely brush the still fresh wound.“You can stop with the powder blue makeup now.”

That gets the laugh from him she was hoping for and he finally looks away from his reflection. She loosens her embrace just enough to allow him to turn around.

“So long as you still love me, I’m fine,”he says.

She’s never said it but he knows, just as well as she knows the sound of his voice.

She smiles.“You’re fine.”


End file.
